EA’s had a real hard time as of late and to make things worse, Bank of America Merrill Lynch just slashed the companies profit estimate thanks to poor Battlefront II sales. Meanwhile, Nintendo recently announced that their Switch console has sold over 10 million units worldwide, capping off a wildly successful 2017. 

It’s a dichotomous tale. EA’s year has been riddled with poor sales and even worse public perception, all the while Nintendo is having a record-breaking campaign both in terms of console sales, games sales and public perception.  

The entire saga is made even better when we zoom out a couple years.

EA’s stock has been trending upwards for over five years, even though they’ve been one of the most disliked publishers in gaming. It’s gone from below $15 dollars in 2012 to over $120 earlier this year, and it’s mostly because they’re really good at squeezing every last dollar they can out of games. From loot boxes and microtransactions to yearly game releases that come with entirely underwhelming enhancements, investors love their ability to milk gamers for every penny.

The problem is, they own some of the most exciting names in gaming – FIFA, Madden, Star Wars, Battlefield, Burnout, Titanfall and more. All those iconic titles basically sell themselves these days and EA still managed to screw things up. That’s why Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently announced a cut to the companies profit estimates. 

“EA has had a challenging C4Q, beginning with the shutdown of Visceral Games and now Battlefront 2 (BF2) controversy,” said Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post. He also predicts that the game will sell approximately 2.5 million copies less than expected and says that the game’s sales are down 52 percent compared to that of Battlefront (2015).

On the flip side, Nintendo’s stock has almost doubled since the release of the Switch in early March. The company’s good news doesn’t end at the console though. A number of their games have had record-breaking years as well. Both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey have broken sales records and won awards at this years Game Awards, including Breath of the Wild’s Game of the Year nod.

With old favorites Kirby and Yoshi coming to the console in their own games next year, it’s less than likely that Nintendo good fortune will be ending anytime soon. We’ll see if EA can take a page out of their book and turn things around next year.